Set up an Alibaba Cloud connector

C1 provides identity governance for Alibaba Cloud. Integrate your Alibaba Cloud instance with C1 for unified visibility and governance over user access.

Capabilities

Resource	Sync	Provision
Account
Users
Groups
Roles
Policies

Gather Alibaba Cloud credentials

The current Alibaba Cloud connector is read-only partial access sync. It syncs identity inventory and group membership grants, but does not yet sync policy attachment or role assumption grants.

1. Create or select an Alibaba Cloud RAM user for the connector. Do not use Alibaba Cloud account root AccessKeys.

2. Attach the Alibaba-managed AliyunRAMReadOnlyAccess policy, or attach a custom read-only policy that allows ram:GetAccountAlias, ram:ListUsers, ram:ListGroups, ram:ListUsersForGroup, ram:ListRoles, and ram:ListPolicies.

3. Create an AccessKey pair for that RAM user.

4. Copy the AccessKey ID.

5. Copy the AccessKey Secret.

Configuration fields

Field	Required	Description
access-key-id	Yes	AccessKey ID for an Alibaba Cloud RAM user with read-only RAM permissions.
access-key-secret	Yes	AccessKey Secret paired with the AccessKey ID.

Synced resource types

• Account: account alias from RAM GetAccountAlias.
• Users: active and frozen users from IMS ListUsers.
• Groups: groups from IMS ListGroups.
• Group membership grants: group members from IMS ListUsersForGroup.
• Roles: roles from RAM ListRoles.
• Policies: system and custom policies from RAM ListPolicies.

Special notes

• Authentication uses Alibaba Cloud ACS3-HMAC-SHA256 request signing.
• Use one connector instance per Alibaba Cloud account.
• Policy attachment grants are not emitted in the current build.
• Role assumption grants and role attached-policy grants are not emitted in the current build.
• The connector keeps Alibaba RAM and IMS metadata snapshots in the repo for local validation.

Configure the Alibaba Cloud connector

Cloud-hosted

Follow these instructions to use a built-in, no-code connector hosted by C1.

1. In C1, navigate to Apps > Connectors and click Add connector.

2. Search for Alibaba Cloud and click Add.

3. Choose where to add the connector: Create a new app, or Add to an existing app (then select the app).

   If you’re creating a new app, choose whether to link it to an application discovered from your identity provider: select Yes and pick the IdP application, or No to continue with just the connector.

4. Set the connector’s Name and, optionally, a Description.

5. Click the pencil icon next to Owners to choose who can configure and manage this connector.

6. Click Add. The connector is created and its configuration page opens.

7. Find the Settings area of the page and click Edit.

8. Paste the Alibaba Cloud credentials into the relevant fields:

   • AccessKey ID: The RAM identity AccessKey ID.
   • AccessKey Secret: The paired AccessKey Secret.
9. Click Save.

10. The connector’s label changes to Syncing, followed by Connected. You can view the logs to ensure that information is syncing.

Done. Your Alibaba Cloud connector is now pulling access data into C1.

Self-hosted

Follow these instructions to run the Alibaba Cloud connector in your own environment.

1. In C1, navigate to Apps > Connectors and click Add connector.

2. Search for Baton and click Add.

3. Choose where to add the connector, set its name, description, and owners, and click Add.

4. In the Settings area, click Edit, then click Rotate to generate a new Client ID and Client Secret. Store these values securely for your deployment.

5. Configure C1 credentials and Alibaba Cloud credentials as environment variables:

   BATON_CLIENT_ID=<C1 client ID>
   BATON_CLIENT_SECRET=<C1 client secret>
   BATON_HOST_ID=baton-alibaba-cloud
   BATON_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<Alibaba Cloud RAM AccessKey ID>
   BATON_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET=<Alibaba Cloud RAM AccessKey Secret>
   
6. Deploy the connector using the Public ECR image:

   public.ecr.aws/conductorone/baton-alibaba-cloud:<version>
   

   Use a version tag without the leading v, such as 0.0.2.

Done. Your Alibaba Cloud connector is now pulling access data into C1.